


No More Shame

by SeliShady



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Batjokes typical fucked-up-ness, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-26 03:29:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19759684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeliShady/pseuds/SeliShady
Summary: “Sometimes I feel the urge to choke you.”





	No More Shame

“Sometimes I feel the urge to choke you.”

The words vibrated in his skullcap and up the walls, shivering the leaves of the arboricola on their nightstand. He had wanted to whisper them like a confession in church, all hushed sins, and holy damnation. Wanted to say them so quietly J could pretend he never heard and Bruce he never uttered them. But instead he blurted them out like a child that had never learned to keep family secrets to itself, and so they hung in the air, clunky and deafening.

The breathing against his shoulder halted. Lipstick dragged viscous stripes along Bruce's shirt as J swiveled to rake over his closed-off expression and search for a jag he could scrape open. Bruce was trapped under his scrutiny, even as J turned away again to stretch over his lap in a manner that was so relaxed it oozed affectation. Spine curled along the arch of Bruce's thighs, ribs flared against the east sun setting their mattress ablaze and bearing down shadows between his hips, head pressed back into satin and mouth slack as if all bones had been plucked from his body and only left over pliant skin. He guided Bruce's fingers to his hair in a silent demand to be petted. Bruce complied and concentrated on the motion, on the way J’s coarse fringe tangled between his fingers, rather than meeting his eye.

“Why not do it then?” J murmured.

J must have misheard him or assumed he's joking despite the fact Bruce never joked. There was no way he could treat his request so lightly otherwise. It wasn't something to kindly permit, it was something to yell and scream about, was something to push him away and file a restraining order for. Bruce’s request wasn’t natural. J must have recognized that. He must.

The mint scent on J’s collar chafed at the back of his throat with every inhale. Teased him until his joints locked up and a thread of hair twisted taut around his knuckle to the point of snapping.

“Because I’m not sure what kind of man that’d make me.”

J’s head tipped to the side playfully and he hummed. “A sick man.”

The words knocked the air out his lungs as effectively as a sucker punch, though he nodded in agreement nonetheless. It was the least he deserved in the face of what he had just confessed. He should have settled down once they had shifted from being nemesis to participants in a mutually beneficial arrangement preventing both of them from reaching their inevitable melting point and taking the whole of Gotham with them. Once their hands had clasped on their deal for peace, he should have retired their feud at long last.

Unfortunately, ultimately, old instincts remained ingrained in his bones.

He couldn't get rid of the compulsion to bruise the man spread out before him, to simply hurt him until his brain quit feigning at being an echo chamber for all the wails in the city streets. Needed to bare his teeth after the danger was long gone, unable to recognize he didn't have to draw blood anymore to survive because it's the only way he had ever known how to be. He was a dog used to fighting for his life in cage fights baffled at a hand that petted instead of struck, was a crippled animal and an adrenaline addict and an utter fool. 

“A happy man,” J continued.

Bruce flinched and nodded again.

“And still,” he trailed off, drew Bruce’s hand in his and kissed it gently, “a good man.”

Bruce blinked. J carved a path with his fingertips up Bruce’s arm before he found his cheek. Sparrows flew by the window, fluttered languid shadows around his face and rubbed the angles of his half-naked body down into something well worn and soon to be shed off, a suit that had grown loose. He smiled softly, and it was the peak of serenity.

“No more shame Bats, yeah? You promised.”

It's a mantra J had instilled in him at the start of their arrangement, back when they had faced each other on the rooftop of Gotham Cathedral. When rain had soaked their clothes and plastered hair onto J’s frown as he staggered around, looking anywhere but at Bruce, teeth pinching the skin of his upper lip until it was tight with the shared knowledge that they would destroy each other soon if they didn't find a turning point. He stated Bruce shrugging of his inhibitions as his one requirement to weighing out their compromise, their business deal, their arrangement, their whatever the hell it was, such a meek simple request compared to all the rules Bruce laid on him, and yet.

And yet it was harder for Bruce to fulfill this one simple promise than it was for J to uphold his several, went so against his very nature it scuffed his mind raw every time he thought of it, left him more exposed than someone physically peeling off his armor could ever achieve. 

But when J didn't immediately pull away after having had to remind him of their deal, when Bruce stumbled wrong more often than not but he kept on correcting him with iron patience; it gave Bruce hope that maybe one day, with a lot of luck, he would manage to get it right without ending up alone in the process. Made him want to try, at least.

Bruce's lips tugged up, twitched for a daring split second, and soon he grew bold enough to repeat the same motion a few times until he could hold it and it felt real on his cheeks instead of sticking out wrong like many of his expressions tended to.

J stared at him, eyes suspiciously bright, and mouth trembling. Then he drew Bruce close by the scruff until J's forehead was buried in his shoulder. He bared his neck, hair brushing warm against Bruce’s chin. The sensation reminded Bruce of turning his face to the sun, nine years old and hands frayed dirty, while he crawled out of the opening of a cave determined to hold him down and cage him in fear.

“Do it.”

He reached out, studied the vulnerable line of J’s spine, the excited stutter of his chest and slowly closed one hand around his throat while stroking along the nape with the other.

No more shame.

**Author's Note:**

> :D


End file.
